How to create the moving through the mirror illusion at home.
The Colour Flip room at Twist Museum, with its inverted rooms, provides the perfect playground for creating magical videos. Here I’m going to show you how to create your own version of the moving through a mirror illusion. You can make it at home with just a large wall mirror. At the end I’ll explain how filming at Twist makes the process easier and more colourful.
In addition to the mirror, you will need a mobile phone and a video editing app (or computer software). The editor doesn’t need to be fancy; it just needs to be able to reverse and reflect a video clip.
Step 1 – capture the footage
Film a selfie video that starts with your arm outstretched and your back towards the mirror. Then swing your whole body around so that the moment the phone camera reaches the mirror, your head touches the mirror. The video below shows me in action taking this clip. Be careful that you don’t hit the mirror hard with either the phone or your face, as you don’t want to crack it.
The key to making a smooth transition is to finish in the position shown in this diagram. You want the far edge of the mirror and the point of contact of your faces to be both centred and vertical. It may take a few attempts to choreograph this movement correctly but once it’s been captured, you can start the editing.
Step 2 – trim the footage
Using a video editor, trim the video so it starts just as your arm begins to swing and stops at the moment your face touches the mirror. If the point of contact isn’t exactly in the centre or vertical you can correct it now. Zoom in a little and then you can shift the position and/or rotate the video to bring it to the perfect position.
Step 3 – assemble the clips
You will need to use the same clip four times if you want the video to loop. The diagram below shows the sequence. Clip 1 is what you’ve just been working on. Clip 2 is the footage reversed so it plays backwards and reflected horizontally. Clip 3 is the footage playing forwards again but still reflected. Clip 4 is the footage reversed in time but without a reflection.
Bonus step 4 – tweak the speeds
This is for more advanced video editors. It just helps make the transition more fluid. Inevitably, when filming the selfie you will slow down as the phone and your face come close to the mirror as you don’t want to damage anything. You can compensate for this in the film edit by speeding the footage up at that moment. It helps the transition and has the effect of being sucked into the reflection before being spat out again.
Filming with the Colour Flip room at Twist Museum
The Colour Flip room is actually two mirrored rooms at Twist. One is colourful and the other is just painted black & white. A large mirror divides them down the middle. As one room is the reflection of the other, you won’t need to reflect any video footage. Instead, you will need to capture two different film clips of the arm swing motion. Film one on the black & white side, then swap over to film the colour side. When you switch sides, you also need to switch arms. If you held the phone in your right hand, you’d need to then do the second film holding it in the left hand.
Once you’ve trimmed the two films down and centred them, the edit sequence to create a loop is:
Clip 1 – Black & white side
Clip 2 – Colourful side
Clip 3 – Reversed in time colourful side
Clip 4 – Reversed in time, Black & white side
There are lots of other magical effects you can film in the Colour Flip room. If you do make some videos, don’t forget to tag Twist Museum in anything you post online. We’d love to see your creativity.
Contributed by Dr Matt Pritchard.
